


we are like broken instruments (twisted up and wheezing out the runnels)

by staticbees



Category: DCU (Comics), The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: DC/Batfam AU, Gen, Melanie King is Red Hood, sorta - Freeform, well.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-22
Updated: 2019-03-22
Packaged: 2019-11-27 18:30:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18197789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/staticbees/pseuds/staticbees
Summary: Melanie King, a normal, everyday citizen, dies trying to stop a mugging. She bleeds out in an alleyway, and they find her body four days later.The vigilante known as Shrike dies alone from a gunshot wound in the tunnels under the Magnus Institute. Elias Bouchard pleads guilty. He almost seems pleased to be arrested.And then she wakes up.





	we are like broken instruments (twisted up and wheezing out the runnels)

**Author's Note:**

> this is a wip of an au i may or may not finish  
> im working on a lot of stuff at once and this was mostly a sudden burst of inspiration from the new episode but /shrugs  
> title is from the daughter song "no care"

She’s clawing her way out of her own grave.

Her fingers are splintered and scraped red raw, breathing panicky, voice hoarse and desperate as she cries out, screaming for someone, anyone, to save her.

Names she barely recognizes, ones that fill her with warmth or taste like herbal tea or curdle an old hatred in her chest, spill from her mouth like silver worms from puckered skin.

_“Basira!”_

_“Tim!”_

_“Daisy!”_

_“Martin!”_

No one hears her. No one is left to hear.

And then, as if it has always been there, instead of polished wood and cold bitter cemetery dirt, the door in front of her opens, and she stumbles through.

She falls to her knees, coughing, gasping for air. Her sore, trembling hands are stained with blood, lungs aching, the suit she’s wearing (was buried in) feeling suffocating in the sudden open space.

Someone stands over her, and she glares halfheartedly at them, all slick bobbed black hair and matte red lipstick. Their eyes, though, feel like caves, hungry and yawning, drawing her into twisting formations of rock and spire, slick and dark with icy water, bats roosting in the shadowed corners _–_

She shakes it off. Stay focused. Remember what he taught you.

Whatever the hell that’s supposed to mean.

“Who the fuck are you?” she spits.

The figure stills, and she tenses, fingers twitching. Stupid, stupid, _stupid_ , she should’ve thought before she spoke, should’ve assessed the situation, instead of going for instinct. Swearing at the person who saved her was exactly the sort of fuckup she would’ve made _before_ she became… whatever she was.  

But they just study her. Let out a small puff of air that might be a laugh. “I don’t have a name,” they say, matter-of-fact. “But you can call me Helen. What do you remember?”

 _Corvus giving her a crooked grin, eyes hidden behind his domino mask, as he leaps backwards off a rooftop. Raptor, knife between her teeth, blood on her hands, eyes blazing. Owl, movements pointed and deliberate, mouth pursed, hijab shadowing her eyes_ , _as she says–_ “Nothing,” she grits out. “I don’t remember anything.”

The person – Helen – nods, as if this is to be expected, as if this is _normal_ . “Your name is Melanie King,” they inform her. “You were dead.” They don’t elaborate.

“Who…”

“Elias Bouchard. The Watcher’s Crown.”

And suddenly the memories come rushing back, and with them, the suffocating red rage that comes from knowing your murderer’s face, the sound of his voice, the way he threatened those closest to you with knowledge he shouldn’t, by any rights, have, right before he shot you and left you to bleed out, alone, in the cold empty night. She growls.

“That _bastard,_ ” she spits, all the force of a bullet to the gut behind her words. “He better be dead.”

Helen’s mouth twists. “No. You remain unavenged.”

“They didn’t– they just let him _get away with it?_ ” she asks, incredulous. But of course they did, because she’s never really _been_ a Bird, has she, always been on the sidelines, was only allowed to join in the first place because one of them had _died._ “Bet Delphi didn't want to break his precious little rule.” She fumes in that, that even _Raptor_ didn’t get to him, didn’t slash across his throat and burn his body like she did with the Stranger’s followers.

“He's in prison. For life, but we all know it's not going to last.” Helen says flatly. Melanie wonders briefly if they have her own reasons for wanting him dead.

“He needs to die.” Melanie’s voice comes out surprisingly steady, far calmer than she feels. “For what he did to me. To _us_ .”

Helen smiles. It doesn’t quite reach their eyes. “I can help you with that.”

 

 

And so she trains. Learns to _hunt._ To kill. To bleed someone out slowly, watching the light in their eyes fade, knife cuts decorating their skin, and to kill quick, painless, slicing their throat without a sound.  
  
She wonders if this is what Raptor learned, the way she beats down her enemies with brutal efficiency, merciless and cold and sharp, doing what needs to be done. Delphi and Canary never approved, of _course_ they didn’t, because Raptor was a _soldier_ , and _they_ were practically an extension of the useless fucking police force, but they kept her around anyway, because when she was around Owl, she was _placated._ Soft, almost, but Melanie knew if she said that to her face she’d get a bullet to the throat in a back alley somewhere, and no one would ever find her body.

Helen is nice, for a killer, but Melanie’s teachers, the physically violent ones, the ones that’d rather use fists and bullets over doors and mazes, are the lowest of the low, child traffickers and rapists and cold-blooded murderers, and most of them are dead before they’re done.  
  
They deserved it, she tells Helen afterwards, voice sharp and raised to drown out the memories of their screams, and Helen just nods.

 

 

When she picks up the red helmet, reflection mirrored in the shiny smooth surface, she _knows._

Shrike is dead. Has been for five years. She’s Red Hawk, now, and she’s going to fucking show them what happens when you kill a Bird.


End file.
